NC Suggestions: The Best Opinion Pieces Of The Day
Here’s a curation of the opinion pieces that caught our attention today.
- There is no Emergency
On the 43rd anniversary of India’s emergency, Pratap Bhanu Mehta today re-shared a column he wrote for The Indian Express two years ago. In the column, he says no one should underestimate the destruction the Emergency of 1975 unleashed on freedom and democracy.
But that event was all on the surface. Many are arguing that we are now moving towards an undeclared Emergency that seems equally insidious and far-reaching. The real Emergency will be that we will not even recognise that we are in an Emergency. But surely those who accuse you of creating Emergency-like conditions are being unfair to you. How can the signs possibly point to Emergency-like conditions? After all, Our Leader is always right.
Nationalism is used to stifle all thinking. The cultivation of collective narcissism to stifle all individuality, the promulgation of uncontested definitions of nationalism to pre-empt all debate over genuine national interest, the constant hunt for contrived enemies of the nation, is suffocating thought. But we cannot declare this to be an Emergency, since that would require us to think.
- Choreography of a break-up
In his column for The Indian Express today, Kapil Sibal says the BJP-PDP alliance was untenable at birth. Their ideological predilections were as far apart as the North Pole from the South Pole. When stitching the alliance, Narendra Modi was more than willing to cohabit with dynastic politics, a charge he made against the father-daughter duo of the late Mufti Mohammed Sayeed and Mehbooba Mufti so viciously in his pre-election rhetoric, and which he often levels against the Congress party.
The reconciliation of differences and sustainable economic development were to go hand-in-hand, for one was not to succeed without the other. Instead, lives have been battered and large sections of those living in the line of fire along the LoC displaced. Fomenting trouble in Jammu by victimising the Bakherwals, a nomadic Muslim community, and that too at the hands of those who were ministers, is hardly an attempt at reconciliation. The tragic incident at Kathua and its politicisation shows up the real face of the BJP.
The killing of Burhan Wani was a turning point, after which incidents of terror have increased manifold. There has been a 64 per cent rise in terror-related incidents during 2015-2017 over the period 2012-2014. Instead of reconciliation we saw unabashed confrontation. Development was sacrificed at the altar of teaching militants a lesson. For the architect of the AoA to blame the PDP is part of a larger design. With 2019 round the corner, a polarised J&K will add fuel to the fire, the centrality of the BJP’s communal agenda.
- BJP wants to revoke Article 370, ironically Sardar Patel was its architect
Srinath Raghavan, in his column for The Print writes that the BJP’s decision to pull out of the alliance in Jammu and Kashmir has led to recrimination on all sides.
The junior minister for home affairs responded to criticism from the Congress president with a tweet: “Sardar Patel ji solved all other regions. Nehru ji took charge of Kashmir & created more trouble”. Kiren Rijiju was evidently taking his cue from the Prime Minister, who claimed in Parliament earlier this year that “if Sardar Patel had become the prime minister, today a part of our beloved Kashmir would not have been under Pakistani occupation”. Such assertions are of a piece with the larger attempt of the BJP to co-opt Patel and counterpose him with Nehru at every turn. But they scarcely comport with well-established facts of the matter.
At the time of Independence, the future of three princely states remained unresolved in terms of their accession to India or Pakistan: Junagadh, Hyderabad and Kashmir. Nehru and Patel were closely involved in handling these three states. To be sure, they had their differences of opinion, approach and style, but these were worked through by extensive consultation.
Sardar Patel was the architect of the Article 370. Historical howlers aside, there is a delicious irony in the BJP’s attempt to claim him for itself while simultaneously seeking to overturn his effort to ensure genuine autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir within the Indian constitution.
- Why India must safeguard the rights of internal migrants
Laying emphasis on the plight of internal migrants in our country, Kumkum Dasgupta says in her column for Hindustan Times that it’s not just refugees who often face the wrath of a host State; even internal migrants, especially the poor, face similar roadblocks in their own countries even though they are legitimate citizens. The negative feeling about migrants reflects in India’s policies too: Our social and political rights are based on the assumption that people are sedentary.
India may not have a hukou or an apartheid system, but here, too, migrants don’t have it easy. For example, a former Delhi chief minister once blamed migrants for putting enormous pressure on the infrastructure of the city. The Shiv Sena’s Bal Thackeray once said one Bihari brought with him a hundred headaches. These unwarranted comments probably mirror a popular belief that migrants create problems and are a burden on a host state. But in reality, labour mobility is not just good for those on the move but it also has a positive effect on the economy.
The only social support migrant families possess is the compensation offered by the state in the case of death at work. Kerala is the only state in India which a scheme which treats migrant welfare as the “duty of the state”.
The central government must now take note of mobility and make social and political rights portable, which means people should not lose the rights they have in their localities of origin when they move; and share in the same bundle of rights as held by others in their destination areas.
- 1975 Emergency: Indian Democracy Needs ‘Vertical Men’ Like Advani
Columnist Sudheendra Kulkarni writes in his article for The Quint that Lal Krishna Advani is a tall man, both literally and figuratively. At 90, he still stands upright, again both literally and figuratively. Even his ideological critics would concede that he has never bent his core principles for any selfish gain. He is, in Auden’s words, a ‘Vertical Man’.
“You were asked only to bend, but crawled,” Advani had said. His words must never be forgotten if we want democracy, press freedom and civil liberties in India must survive. This cautionary message has become more pertinent now when the freedom of the media and citizens’ freedom of expression – which is the life breath of democracy – have come under new kinds of threat.
Ironically – though not surprisingly – this is happening while the BJP is in power. Ironic because – it was the leaders and cadres of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (the former avatar of the BJP) who were at the forefront of the struggle against the Emergency. Unsurprising, because when a political party ─ any party ─ makes ‘winning’ and ‘retention of power’ its overriding goal, it inevitably dilutes its commitment to the philosophy and practice of democracy. This is why the Congress introduced the Emergency in 1975, even though it was the primary builder of democracy in India after it had led the nation’s freedom struggle to victory in 1947.